Eva Cobau

Eva Cobau is taking a well-deserved semester off from her studies at Macomb after completing the College’s Laboratory Assistant program and landing a full-time job at St. John Hospital in Detroit as a phlebotomist.

“I like it a lot,” says Cobau, who performs blood draws on the midnight shift. “I like that I am actually working with patients.”

After graduating high school, Cobau’s path didn’t take her anywhere near a hospital. She enrolled in cosmetology school and held a series of restaurant jobs, which she termed “awful.” A year of that convinced her to reconsider a former notion.

“It’s been my lifelong dream to be a mortician and own my own funeral home,” offers Cobau. “But in high school, I had this notion I wasn’t fit for college. Then I realized, I was not enjoying my time, I wasn’t learning anything new and I wasn’t bettering myself.”

Placement tests at Macomb confirmed Cobau had an aptitude, as well as an interest, in anatomy and biology. She began taking the classes she will need to enter Wayne State University’s Mortuary Science program. But she didn’t want to wait until after she earned her bachelor’s degree to leave restaurant work behind her.

“I wanted a job that would get me through college,” says Cobau, 20, “and I had all this knowledge from my biology classes that I wanted to put to use.”

She spoke with her Macomb counselor about what options there were for working in a field more closely aligned to her career interests and college studies. He suggested the Laboratory Assistant program offered by the College’s Workforce and Continuing Education Department. Cobau completed the program in six months and was hired by St. John during an internship there at the end of her classes.

“I now appreciate why my instructor kept going over precision and patient identification because when you are in the field that is everything,” says Cobau, who is looking forward to returning to Macomb in a semester or two. “The campus is beautiful, the labs are well equipped. I love Macomb. Going there was one of the best decisions of my life.”